Another main option is to become so trusted and ingrained with an ally that they allow you to expand past stalemate lines etc, such that your stab grabs your 16th through 18th centers, and 10th through 15th are actually behind your front line where they can't be denied by third parties.

^ What Valis said. Cross the stalemateline in midgame, so you don't have to do that in end game. Very tough to do with good players, but it's the ultimate prize.

He correct answer to this question is to not let the fame get down to three players. It's so so so much easier to solo on a board with 6 or 7 players than it is to solo on a board with three

As Turkey; attack Austria
As Italy; attack Austria
As Russia; attack Austria
As Germany; attack Austria
As France; attack Germany so that you can then attack Austria
As England; attack Germany so that you can then attack Austria
As Austria; hedgehog, and then attack Germany

*furiously scribbling down notes*

You'll quickly learn that HR is the resident idiot.

ghug's just jealous of my higher solo rate.

Sorry, we forgot that piece of advice. Invite 6 people from a different site you hang out on who don't know how to play and play a live game with them. After 22 or so times you'll find your win rate sky rocketing! Just remember to make them private games.

Hey! About half of them knew how to play, and a couple of them have beaten me.

He's probably still embarassed about gameID=80577 anyway

Oh, if it's a high solo rate you're after, be sure to (1) play tons of live games, (2) play games with players that have exactly 95, 90 or 80 , and (3) be sure to check for takeover positions of recently banned players.

Nah, HR. You played that one very well. Your alliance with Seattle's power grid was especially well done.

I've often been stabbed by the power grid.

well I've played more games than anyone else who has posted on this thread, so clearly I'm the best one here, right?

glad we agree.



now, soloing comes down to a few basic tricks. If you are a SC leader, and well into a game, bring one of the smaller powers under your wing, support him, make him feel like you want to move for a two way draw.

Then, set up DMZs that you say 'are for both of our sakes' but really only ensure your safety. If he has a unit placed where it can block any stab you have easily, tell him that it's *making you unsettled, and if he could move it back or to another territory* (hint towards a place that looks fine, but is actually much worse.

After applying seasonings to the delicious turkey of betrayal, eat that bird. Many people on this site have a natural carebear reflex they resort to, so you can use that.

if you are NOT the SC leader, you need to be all bolshevik, and rally people against the main power. If the main power is close to you, the enjoy the sweet deluge of SCs coming your way, if the main power is away from you, then stab someone close to you who is MOVING towards the world power. (easiest in Anc Med or Classic, much harder in world where they're all spread out). People on this site are also a bunch of die hards who always have stars in their eyes, so spew out the 'band of brothers' and emotionally charged crap. Be prevalent in chat, and clinical in betrayal.

The last piece of advice I can give you: play gunboat occasionally. Although it lacks the 'diplomacy' part of the game, it gives you much experience introspectively on people's moves and strategies when moving forward. It helps you develop great ability in your own movements, and can pick people out in full press games, revealing ulterior intentions. You need to know the best ways to move your units, the time to convoy, the time to support yourself into your own territory as that unit is able to bounce support, the time to stab just to gain territory and positioning.

"The last piece of advice I can give you: play gunboat occasionally. Although it lacks the 'diplomacy' part of the game, it gives you much experience introspectively on people's moves and strategies when moving forward. It helps you develop great ability in your own movements, and can pick people out in full press games, revealing ulterior intentions."

This. I probably play more gunboat (no press) than full press due to time constraints. But, gunboat forces you to concentrate on the "commander-in-chief" aspect of the game rather than the diplomat portion. Once the strategies and tactics of moving units around become more clear, then you can work on the more interesting and unpredictable part of the game--other people.

+1 to gunboat. Diplomacy is a game of two parts:

1. The units on the board as they lay
2. The players as they play the units

I play a lot of gunboat, and far too often I see players who make basic errors with their units on board (and not just misorders, which everyone does from time to time, or difficult guessing which is inherent in the game). It doesn't matter how good you are at 2. if you can't play the units properly, and know when you can make guaranteed moves vs non-guaranteed ones, etc, you will fail. And aside from basic single season tactics, absolutely critical if you want to solo is knowing where and when you need to direct unit *flow* to get across stalemate lines *just* as you need them. I think there Re articles about "tempo" kicking about the place - you can't build anywhere, so you need to have free home SCs multiple years in advance and build the right units years in advance. Tricky.

The flip is true too - it doesn't matter how good you are tactically if you can't manage 2. the players. :-)

Both are very much required.

Pimp, are you talking about Diplomacy or a gang bang?

First off there's no silver bullet to solos but a composition of a lot of different skills you need to have in you toolbox and knowledge of when to use them. Even then most solos require some degree of luck involved because it's really not that hard for players to bond together and stalemate a board. Still, never hurts to make your own luck when you can.

Here's a few key skills and tricks that have helped me;
- Never underestimate the emotion element. Many a solo has come as a result of boiled over emotions so invest time to make sure nobody has reason to had hard feelings towards you and doesn't hurt to encourage any hard feelings in somebody else's direction.
- Pick your ally strategically. The sweet spot I find is the guy super loyal willing to go to that 2 way draw with you but not good enough to actually beat or stop you at the end.
- Have a thick skin. I'm not so heartless to say I'd never include a player in a draw if they really really deserved it, but you'll never solo if you don't have a little bit of coldness in you. Most people are forgiving of a well played solo.
- Be patient and learn when to pick your spot. People don't solo who try to make a run from 9 SC's, you need to master when that opening is that causes the right domino effect.

Just realized I'm neglecting my beer so I'll leave it at that. Hope it helped.

Keep someone weak alive, be ready to stab them but don't.

Their SC count added to your own will bring you much closer to a solo, and even if you don't stab them their centers subtract from anyone else's solo attempt.

Make them really owe you. Ideally you want someone desperate to survive, and them promise them you'll keep them alive. Your readiness to stab should keep them loyal if not their duty to you.

Then follow some of the advice above, push your small ally over a stalemate line, get them to distract other players with press.

Also, you can take territory ( ie push enemy units back) without stealing their supply centers, this lets you build up a reserve of centers which you can take with ease, and masks your true strenght. They might become an ally who is relying on those centers ( to fight someone else) but you'll always be ready to steal them and rush to 18

I'd seen no point in gunboat but reading this thread may have changed my mind. I never thought about gunboat as a way to fine tune your tactics.

When i was first started i was over at PlayDip where they allow short-handed games. I found two-players games an exceptionally good tool for fine tuning my skills since you can just isolate your focus on tactics. It's the same idea as gunboat, but generally with gunboat games you get at least one player who flakes and ultimately unbalances the match in somebodies favour. Two player games if you're the best player you're going to win (or just look bigger in the stalemate).

I've found that the key center is Munich. If you have that and nobody broken through your lines anywhere, you can pretty much count on having the requisite number of centers somewhere without getting stalemated. Sorry, Germany!

Sorry Germany? On the contrary, it implies that most successful stops of a solo include the survival of Germany, no? Sounds like a good deal to me.

If your primary goal is to stop a solo...

For two player games, vdip has France vs Austria; which is extraordinarily well balanced and lots of fun.

Other two player variants, such as germany vs italy are not well balanced, but can still be fun ( if you don't mind losing as italy ) and are still great tactical training.

Early game is just a rush for centers, by the mid/ end game is great practice for typical diplomacy games. (Especially between one player tryig to solo and any alliance areayed against them)

Also live games can be played in about 30 minutes, so you can get inots of short games! Defintely worth it, both fun and good practice.

sadly, many live games have people who consistently CD and NMR

Get extremely good at lying so when you stab you can blame the game interface for getting your orders wrong. Also enter them at the last minute so you can claim you didn't have time to check them. This can buy you more time with an ally that you have been loyal to up until the stab.

Jbalcorn: :-) Yeah. One can play a *lot* more gunboat games in the same time it takes to play one full press (or heck even public press only is time consuming).

It is a *very* different game to Diplomacy with press (or F2F) - and IMO it's still balanced, but the balance is very different to that with press. S1901M is seriously nerve making - almost every opening is insane. :-)

Maybe one day I will run a "winning gunboat openings" vs "winning press openings" data comparison.

Orathaic: Interesting! My big FtF game weakness is speed of tactical analysis leading to error making... I should play some super fast live to fix that sometime. :-)

I had always seen gunboat games as just pushing pieces around the board and missing the point of the game...after all, a game of diplomacy requires, uh, diplomacy, right? This thread brings up a good point about using gunboat to practice tactics, which is an area (I'm finding out) I could still use a bit of learnin'.

How long does a 5 minute phase live game take to play on average?

Classic Live Gunboat 5 min phase takes around 3-4 hours IME.

5 min if you draw Austria.

15 for Italy

Ok. 3-4 hours is an awfully big chunk of time to try and go without any interruptions that would pull me away from the computer.

I guess I'll just hope to draw Italy or Austria every time.

It is much shorter than the 7-12 hours required for a face-to-face game - and then only to get up to 1910 -ish...

One more thing about gunboat:

I think it helps instill the sense of ruthlessness that you'll need if you want to solo in full press games. When you don't have to talk to others, you can block their feelings from your minds better. Also, because their is little communication, it becomes harder to coordinate a combined effort against a dominant player. If you are that dominant player, you can attempt to go for the solo win in ways that may be unpredictable which strengthens your hand presently and your mindset for future games.

Man, horrid spelling and grammar there. *mind *there